JAPAN Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako waved and smiled from an open car in a parade yesterday marking Naruhito’s enthronement as more than 100,000 delighted well-wishers cheered, waved small flags and took photos from packed sidewalks. Security was extremely tight, with police setting up 40 checkpoints leading to the parade area.
IRAN has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said yesterday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions.
BOLIVIA President Evo Morales called for new elections yesterday following nationwide protests over a disputed vote that he claimed he had won. Morales made the announcement after a preliminary report by the Organization of American States found irregularities in the Oct. 20 presidential elections. More on p14
VATICAN CITY Pope Francis yesterday called for South Sudan politicians to salvage a tenuous peace deal and to bring a definitive end to conflicts to the African nation, which he announced he intends to visit in the coming year. In public remarks from a Vatican palace window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Francis also urged South Sudan’s leaders to find “consensus” for the good of the country, where hundreds of thousands of people died in a civil war several years ago.
GERMANY Police and organizers say more than 100,000 people took part in an open-air party celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite the cold and damp, crowds flocked to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate late Saturday for music and fireworks.
UK Britain’s biggest political parties traded allegations of financial recklessness yesterday as they vied to win voters’ trust on the economy ahead of the country’s Dec. 12 election. The main opposition Labour Party accused the governing Conservatives of spreading fake news with an eye-catching claim that Labour spending pledges will cost 1.2 trillion pounds over five years.
UK Queen Elizabeth II joined Britons in remembering their war dead, as the country’s political leaders paused campaigning for the Dec. 12 election to take part in a somber Remembrance Sunday service in London. The queen, dressed in black, watched from a balcony as her son and heir Prince Charles laid a wreath of scarlet poppies on the Cenotaph war memorial near Parliament.
MEXICO Family and friends said goodbye to the last victim of a cartel ambush that killed nine American women and children from a Mormon community in northern Mexico where cartels have disrupted an otherwise peaceful, rural existence.
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